When Nellie asked Roberto Clemente in a June 28, 1970 interview "How many years do you want to play baseball in the major leagues?", Roberto prophetically replied, "I’m a very funny person because I think that I would like to play as long as I can help the ball club. Sometime, like last year, I played with a very bad left shoulder and it was very tough for me. I don’t want to play like that because I hurt myself, I hurt the fans and I hurt the Pittsburgh organization.
"I would like to play until I get to 3,000 hits. I think that is something not too may fellows accomplished in the past and not too many are going to accomplish in the future either. So I would like to play until I get 3,000 hits."
38 years ago today on September 30th, 1972 Nellie King was set to announce the 4th inning when he graciously handed over the microphone to long time partner Bob Prince so he could go down in history calling Roberto's 3,000th hit... which ended up being his last.
